Prima Marketing March Picks- Green with Envy
This lovely little collection is Prima’s new March picks (Oh the things I could do with those lovelies!) Don’t forget to visit their blog for inspiration.
In addition I will share with you one of my latest favorites. This is my new focus, Hybrid. The melding of digitally altered, sized and printed photos with the textural lovelies of traditional scrapping. I did the tag on the bottom with typed journaling and printed that out on photo paper with the 6 photo collage on an 8 X 10 print. Then cut it out and added it as an embellishment. I use Storybook Creator 3.0. You can get it here. Creative Memories also has digi Freebies every day here. 
Categories: Books Tags:
Writing Past Each Other? Literary Translation and Community
I was sent information about this conference by the organisers, who asked me to pass it on to people who may be interested – and what better place to do that than this blog? In particular, the organisers are keen to publicise the call for papers, which closes on 31 March.
As someone with an interest in the translation of poetry, I am especially interested in the sessions they are planning on poetry and translation, which are being organised by poet Chris Price:
As a special feature of the conference, we are also organising translation workshop sessions with noted New Zealand poets (participants should pre-register; details to come). There will also be an evening reading session.
Here is the full announcement. For other details, e.g. how to register, please check out the conference web site.
Writing Past Each Other? Literary Translation and Community International Conference in Literary Translation
Victoria University of Wellington
11-13 December 2010
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:
Lawrence Venuti
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Announcement and Call for Papers
Metge and Kinloch (Talking Past Each Other: Problems in Cross-Cultural Communication, 1978), explore the ways in which those from diverse backgrounds misread important cultural differences in everyday life.
At this conference we hope to explore how literary translation promotes awareness and appreciation of such differences, while simultaneously creating a sense of community across local and international boundaries, or how a lack of such exchange can contribute to the isolation of literary cultures: how is globalisation affecting international literary exchange? how might translation contribute more to literary communities?
While papers on how these issues are articulated in the Asia-Pacific region are especially welcome, we also encourage paper proposals on a wide range of topics related to practical and theoretical aspects of literary translation and covering cross-cultural linguistic interaction from across the globe. Panel proposals (3 to 4 speakers) are especially welcome. Conference papers are to be delivered in English, but may relate to any of the world’s languages.
As a special feature of the conference, we are also organising translation workshop sessions with noted New Zealand poets (participants should pre-register; details to come). There will also be an evening reading session.
Please send abstracts (title of paper, name of presenter, 250 word outline and a short (50 word) bio-bibliographical note) by 31st March 2010 to NZCLT (at) vuw.ac.nz. We plan to publish selected papers from the conference in a refereed volume. Conference attendees wishing to have their papers published should submit them by 31st January 2011 for consideration.
You can buy books by Tim Jones online! Voyagers: SF Poetry from NZ from Amazon.Transported (short story collection) from Fishpond or New Zealand Books Abroad.
Categories: Books Tags:
Their Eyes Were Watching God
I find Zora Neale Hurston so fascinating and I loved this novel. It’s difficult to know which one to talk about first.
.
According to the introduction to the novel by Henry Louis Gates, Zora Neale Hurston was a well-known and respected novelist and essayist for a couple of decades, but the top male writers of that time like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison were critical of her work. It didn’t help that many of her male characters weren’t portrayed in a flattering light. Furthermore, Hurston dared to mention that prejudice about skin color existed among blacks. These things certainly rankled, and Wright took Hurston to task for writing the shuck and jive kind of stuff that condescending white readers might expect from African-American writers while he and Ellison and others were writing seriously about the horror of being a person of color in America.
.
What Wright & Co. failed to grasp was that Hurston’s work had a scholarly basis. She was an ethnographer — an anthropologist specializing in dialects and folklore. She studied at Columbia University with Franz Boas, one of the pioneers of anthropology. One of Hurston’s classmates was Margaret Mead, who would go on to do some noteworthy cultural studies. Hurston would go on to do research in the south and in places like Haiti, where she wrote Their Eyes Were Watching God in 1937.
.
Unfortunately, Hurston and her work fell into obscurity, probably because she didn’t fit in with writers like Wright, Ellison and James Baldwin. Late in her life, she wrote freelance articles and worked as a maid and at other odd jobs. She died penniless in 1960 and was buried in an unmarked grave. About 15 years later, Alice Walker, who viewed Hurston as a spiritual mentor and muse found the grave and put up a marker. (It’s interesting to note that another Harlem Renaissance writer, Nella Larsen, suffered a similar fate and has only recently been rediscovered.)
.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is told in flashback. A woman named Janie comes walking back into her small hometown after a significant absence. She walks past all the neighbors who are on their front porches gawking at her. She goes into her house and shuts the door and her best friend, Phoeby goes to check on Janie, bring her some supper and yes, find out what’s been going on. Janie uses this opportunity to tell Phoeby her life story. (This device seemed a little artificial, but it really works.)
.
From the first, Janie had an idea that marriage could be love, romance, sharing mutual adventures, etc. Her grandmother who brought her up and has had an impossibly hard life tries to discourage that type of thinking. When she realizes that her death is imminent, she “protects” Janie by marrying her off to an older man who basically just wants her as a farm hand. After a year or so, Janie runs off with an admirer, Joe, just as the husband asks for help in moving a manure pile.
.
Joe and Janie move to Eatonville where Joe opens a store. Hurston’s portrayal of the culture in that town is rich and humorous and quite attractive to Janie, but Joe wants her to be his trophy wife and no joining in the chat and fun that goes on right outside the store. After 20 grim years of marriage, Joe dies, leaving Janie well-off. Many men want to marry her, or as she tartly notes, her bank account, but she takes up with Tea Cake, a young harmonica-playing drifter 10 or 12 years her junior.
.
Even though the couple have several problems — Tea Cake gambles, drinks, occasionally beats Janie and both have jealousy issues — Janie finally feels she’s found the marriage she always wanted, and she’s got a co-adventurer as well as a lover. Janie and Tea Cake go “on the muck” in the Florida Everglades. Everything goes well until the Okeechobee hurricane. During this part of the novel that Hurston’s dramatic storytelling gifts are magnificently showcased.
.
Their Eyes Were Watching God is a powerful book. There are one or two scenes in Eatonville in which I felt that Hurston the ethnographer got the better of Hurston the storyteller and it slowed the story down a bit, but that’s a very minor gripe.
.
Reading this novel makes me so glad that it (and its author) was rescued from near-obscurity and raised to its proper place as a classic American novel during the late 1960s and early 70s. I was also pleased to see how profoundly Alice Walker was influenced by Zora Neale Hurston. The Color Purple with its rich use of dialect, strong female characters (as well as some scoundrelly male characters) and epic storytelling is a perfect homage to Zora Neale Hurston.
.
Would I read more of Hurston? I’m almost sure that nothing could top Their Eyes Were Watching God but I’m eager to read more, especially some of her essays and Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston’s 1942 autobiography.
.
Because I read this book during the week of February 14, I’ll always associate Their Eyes Were Watching God with Valentine’s Day and count Janie and Tea Cake among my favorite couples in literature.
Categories: Books Tags:
It’s Tuesday, Where Are You?
Actually, it’s well into Wednesday here, but I think there’s still a few small drops of Tuesday left in the US and Canada.
I always follow this feature at An Adventure In Reading and post my answer in the comment section. This is the first time I’ve featured it here. Why now? Work (wearing hobnailed boots and pungent socks) is kicking my bookwormy, bloggy ass. I can’t seem to finish any of the three books I’ve got going or put together a halfway decent review of what I have finished lately. Then there’s also the ongoing internet service problem I’m having at home which will be funny someday, but Not. Right. Now.
OK, enough whining. This isn’t about me. As most of you know, the answer to “It’s Tuesday…Where are you?” is: Where are your characters? What are they doing? I’m not sure, but I think I can pull myself together enough to report on what’s going on with them:
1. The Way West (novel) -A.B. Guthrie, Jr. So far, a bunch of townspeople (mostly men) are standing in front of a general store somewhere in Missouri, weighing the pros and cons of hitting the trail for Oregon…wonder how that’s gonna turn out?
2. Virginia Woolf (biography) – Hermione Lee. Virginia Stephen has just married Leonard Woolf and she’s hard at work on the nth draft of her first novel, The Voyage Out, but she’s feeling a little stressed out and run-down. Here comes her nineteenth nervous breakdown.
3. Dodsworth (novel) – Sinclair Lewis. Automobile magnate Sam Dodsworth is in Spain with his fortysomething wife, Fran, who is morphing in front of his startled eyes from a respectable Midwestern matron into a status-hungry trollop with a penchant for gigolos.
What’s up with your characters today?
Categories: Books Tags:
Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Format: Trade paperback
Released: March 4th, 2010
Grade rating: A+
Amazon summary:
They say that when you die your whole life flashes before your eyes, but that’s not how it happened for me. Sam Kingston is dead. Except she isn’t. On a rainy February night, eighteen-year-old Sam is killed in a horrific car crash. But then the impossible happens: she wakes up in her own bed, on the morning of the day that she died. Forced to live over and over the last day of her life the drive to school, skipping class, the fateful party she desperately struggles to alter the outcome, but every morning she wakes up on the day of the crash. This is a story of a girl who dies young, but in the process learns how to live. And who falls in love… a little too late.
Review:
I’ve been trying to write this review for weeks, but have had a hard time putting my thoughts into words. I could just say that Before I Fall is amazing, fantastic, a groundbreaking debut. It’s all of these things, yet so much more. You know when you read a book, and you’re left speechless at the end, like you’re in sensory overload? That was what happened to me when I read Before I Fall. I was a complete mess, left reeling like Sam’s end had been my end, like her thoughts and feelings had been my own. It’s a powerful feeling, though completely unprecedented.
Before I Fall made me wish I was a writer. It made me wish I could arrange sentences that would mean something to people, and maybe even change how they live their life. Not many books do that for me, but when they do, they cast their spell on me and stay in my head forever. Sam’s story did more than that — it made me realise that life is precious, and that every single choice we make has an effect. We might not see it, but it’s there. Our decisions have the ability to alter someone’s path, or someone’s self perception. We have to think about what we do, how we treat others and what one wrong turn can lead to.
Sam’s whole journey is filled with regrets and what ifs. Her story is tragic, yes, but it’s also redeeming. How many of us wish we could relive a day, maybe do something differently, or take something back? It’s a dream we’ll never experience, but for Sam it’s her reality, even her nightmare. She has a second chance, and she has to use it to fix the trouble she caused, and the people she hurt along the way. I didn’t like Sam at first; I thought she was horrible, stuck-up, and not someone I’d ever want to know. Lauren Oliver warned me of this before I started the book, so I was prepared to hate her. What I wasn’t prepared for was how much she’d change, and how much she’d speak to me and my way of life.
I’m a naturally shy, quiet person: I don’t take risks, I don’t try many new things, and I worry about situations I have no control over. Lauren has shown me that life’s too short to worry about what might happen in the future, and that once it’s gone, it’s gone. I’ve made a conscious effort to live a little, and not focus on the negatives of everything. For that I owe her a huge thanks, because it’s something I’ve struggled with for a long time. On a personal level, this book is everything I’ve needed, and I hope sharing my thoughts can make someone like me open their eyes to new experiences.
To put it simply, just buy this book. Meet Sam, cry with Sam, and live with Sam. Then go out and do something new. Even if you only say hi to someone outside your circle, or drive a different way to work, it’s a step in the right direction.
Categories: Books Tags:
US Vs. UK: Ash Covers
US // UK
The UK cover is my favourite here, hands down. It’s so magical and pretty, and even nicer in person — it’s all shiny and reflective. I do like the US cover, but I think it looks too dark. The title font is lovely though, and I would be intrigued if I saw it in a bookshop.
Well done to Hodder UK for this cover, it’s one of my top covers of 2010 so far!
Categories: Books Tags:
Spring Literature Workshop
Spring Literature Workshop
Dates: April 12, 13, 15, 19, 20, & 22; 5:30-7pm
Reserve at Eventbrite
This 6-session intensive professional-development workshop will give attendees the opportunity to…
Visit website for more news. http://mosaicbooks.blogspot.com
Categories: Books Tags:
2010 Orange Prize Long List
Yesterday the long list for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction was announced. The Orange Prize, in its second decade, aims to “promote accessibility, originality and excellence” in writing by women. The shortlist will be announced on April 20th, and the award ceremony for the fiction prize, as well as for the Orange Award for New Writers, will take place June 9th. Previous winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction include Marilynne Robinson, Valerie Martin, Ann Patchett, Lionel Shriver, Rose Tremain, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, Zadie Smith, and Ann Michaels. Here are the women on this year’s longlist:
- Rosie Alison, The Very Thought of You
- Eleanor Catton, The Rehearsal
- Clare Clark, Savage
- Amanda Craig, Hearts and Minds
- Roopa Farooki, The Way Things Look to Me
- Rebecca Gowers, The Twisted Heart
- M.J. Hyland, This is How
- Sadie Jones, Small Wars
- Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna
- Laila Lalami, Secret Son
- Andrea Levy, The Long Song
- Attica Locke, Black Water Rising
- Maria McCann, The Wilding
- Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
- Nadifa Mohamed, Black Mamba Boy
- Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs
- Monique Roffey, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
- Amy Sackville, The Still Point
- Kathryn Stockett, The Help
- Sarah Waters, The Little Stranger
Categories: Books Tags:
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on Screen
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the first book in the Millenium Series by Stieg Larsson, is a hot hot hot commodity around the world. Since the beginning of the year, it’s the #1 bestselling book at Broadway Books, a stat that holds true for many stores, I’m sure. The second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire, will be available in paperback next week. It’s been selling very well in hardback, but I’m expecting sales to explode when the paperback hits the streets. The third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, will be available in a hardbound edition at the end of May.
For those of you who have been eager to see this gripping story hit the big screen, the Swedish film of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, with English subtitles, is scheduled to open at many theaters in the US starting this month, and is on the calendar to open in Portland (at Cinema 21) on April 16.
In the first book, a disgraced financial journalist joins forces with an antisocial (and tattooed) but brilliant young hacker to solve a 40-year-old (and very creepy) disappearance.
The story behind the story in the movie is almost as interesting as the plot itself. Author Stieg Larsson, born in 1954, was a Swedish writer and journalist. Prior to his sudden death of a heart attack in November 2004, he finished the three detective novels in his Millenium series, which were published posthumously. Altogether, his trilogy has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide (through the summer of 2009), and he was the second bestselling author in the world in 2008. All three books were adapted into films in 2009 and have become smash hits in Europe. Before his career as a writer, Stieg Larsson was mostly known for his struggle against racism and right-wing extremism.
But wait, the real plot gets even stickier than the fictional one. When Larsson started writing the Millennium series, he supposedly laid out an outline of a total of ten books. Before his death in November 2004, he had finished the first three books and was well underway with the fourth. In an email written to a friend a month before his death, Larsson said that he had finished about half of the fourth book — the beginning and the end — but that the middle part was not finished yet.
Many readers have asked if Eva Gabrielsson, Larsson’s life companion, could finish the fourth book, as she was deeply involved in the writing while he was still alive. Gabrielsson herself is very positive that she could; however, Swedish jurisdiction obstructs such a solution. Because Gabrielsson and Larsson never married and because he did not leave behind a will, literary rights to his first three books have fallen to his father and brother. His long-time partner claims to have the laptop with the partial manuscript for the fourth book on it, but she is unwilling to part with it unless she is allowed to manage literary rights to the series. The suspense continues!
Not wanting to be left out, Hollywood is of course planning a major English language movie of its own, based on the Larsson books. One recent rumor has Carey Mulligan, 2010 Oscar nominee for her role in An Education, in line to play Lizbeth, the tattooed hacker. Stay tuned for all the news to come! If you want us to hold any of the forthcoming books for you, just give us a shout.
Categories: Books Tags:
Tonight at 7 – Oregon’s History in Pictures
Oregon is one darned beautiful state. Of course, some might consider me a little biased, given that I am a native Oregon, but what the heck. Just try and prove me wrong! Tonight, historian William Stack will likely prove me right, as he presents his recently published book Historic Photos of Oregon (Turner Publishing), through discussion and slides.
This pictorial history of Oregon, which offers 200 black-and-white photographs, covers the years 1860 through 1971, in five chronological chapters. Although many people are aware of Dorothea Lange’s stunning photographs humanizing the tragic consequences of the Great Depression, most people associate her work with California and the Southwest. But she also came to Oregon, where her images of southern and eastern Oregon during the Depression reveal the hardscrabble life of that place and time while also showing the inner strength, pride and joy of those hardworking people. The book includes fifteen of her photographs of Oregon.
Another major photographer represented in the collection is Edward S. Curtis, who spent his life documenting life among the indigenous peoples of the American West. The book also shows scenes from the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition; an early shot from the Multnomah Athletic Club, established in 1891; a motorcycle club from 1941, the construction of the Bonneville Dam, Celilo Falls before the building of the Dalles Dam flooded the falls; climbers on Mt. Hood throughout the years; and a wonderful photograph from 1912 of Abigal Scott Duniway, Oregon’smost prominent suffragette, with Governor Oswald West and Viola M. Coe, signing Oregon’s Equal Suffrage Proclamation.
In addition to its gorgeous scenery, Oregon has a marvelously interesting history. We hope you can join us tonight at 7 pm for this wonderful event.
Categories: Books Tags: